Free Hungry Spirits [Spirits 04] by Alice Duncan Page B

“hellos” from my family, but before she and Sam had stopped grinning at each other, I yanked Lucy toward the piano.
    Our rehearsal went really well, except that Lucy kept sneaking peeks at Sam as we sang. In an attempt to discern what fascinated her so, I looked at him once or twice as well. Sam wasn’t a bad-looking man. He had an olive complexion that went well with his last name, black hair and brown eyes. He was tall and not skinny, as Billy was, but not fat either. I expect he weighed a little more than he’d like to if I’d asked, which I never would, of course. I still couldn’t understand Lucy’s fascination, however, and I couldn’t figure out why said fascination rankled with me. I sure didn’t have designs on Sam Rotondo! Shoot, I’d resented him for a couple of years by the time that night rolled around, mainly because he kept suspecting me of doing illegal or immoral things.
    I decided that my irritation stemmed from the fact that, if Lucy’s attraction was reciprocated, Sam might desert my family and, therefore Billy, for Lucy instead. Billy’d lost too much in his life already; he couldn’t afford to lose a good friend like Sam, too.
    That explanation didn’t sit comfortably with me, but it was the only one I could come up with that would account for the unusual reaction I had to Lucy’s obvious curiosity about Sam Rotondo. The sole comfort I could garner from the situation was that Sam seemed oblivious to Lucy’s fascination with him. I decided not to think about it. We got a good deal of practicing done that night, and Lucy’s father picked her up, so I didn’t have to drive her home. Not that I’d have minded.
    Lucy and I practiced our duet again on Thursday night at choir rehearsal, to the applause of the rest of the choir and Mr. Hostetter. Their approval made me feel a trifle better about life in general.
    This happy attitude lasted until Saturday night, when Lucy came to dinner at our house. I’d conducted myself quite well at the cooking class that day, amazingly enough. Flossie had made name tents, so I got to fix names to faces. Gertrude still appeared more frightened that I deemed appropriate, although I didn’t know why and nobody told me.
    We fixed crumbed potatoes, the recipe for which appeared on page eighteen of Sixty-Five Delicious Dishes. It was the simplest recipe I could find in the stupid book, because I already had enough to do that day. I’d aimed to conduct a subtle and clever interrogation of my students, paying particular attention to Gertrude Minneke, but I didn’t get the chance to do so, because she ran off the instant the class was over, clutching her crumbed potatoes as if she expected them to save her life. Nuts.
    I took the leftovers home for dinner. Dinner was, of course, wonderful, because Aunt Vi cooked it. My paltry potatoes went pretty well with the beef loaf she fixed. Thank goodness none of my family members mentioned my cooking class, because the fact that I taught the class at all still embarrassed me. This, in spite of three weeks of moderate successes. It was evidently going to take me a good deal more than three weeks without a disaster to overcome a lifetime’s worth of cooking failures.
    At any rate, Lucille Spinks came to our house for dinner, which was tasty, and we aimed to practice our duet afterwards. Ma offered to wash and dry the dishes for us since we needed to practice, but we helped her. We already knew the song, after all, and were only getting together for one last rehearsal. Besides, Ma worked very hard during the day. She shouldn’t have to work at night, too.
    When the dishes were done and my family was ensconced in the living room reading, I trotted to the piano and played the music through once. And then Lucy and I began singing. We sounded pretty good together, but she positively grilled me for information about Sam Rotondo in between verses.
    “ Is he a married man?” she asked. I think she was attempting to act as if